Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective

by Jay Atkinson

  Al Seghezzi was stunned. He leaned to his wife's ear and whispered, “Let's go sit down.”

  While Al steered his wife through the crowd of mourners, Joey's wife, Maureen, came through the side entrance feeling like she was in a movie. A city kid who had grown up in a tiny clapboard house over the bridge in Charlestown, the former Maureen Taylor had endured somewhat of a love-dislike relationship with her old-school father-in-law, sharing an address but few of the same opinions with a man who had grown up during the Depression and served in the Great War. The two of them knew how to get under each other's skin, and the brash, outspoken kid from the 'town had eventually come to a détente with the tough old Irish cop for three reasons: Joseph, Liam, and Lucas, the tousle-haired, freckle-faced princes who wielded the most power in the McCain household.

  One time, when the boys were very young, big Joe said he would buy a bicycle for Joseph. Despite never earning more than a patrolman's salary and what he could get from moonlighting, Joe had always been generous with a buck. That night, after a few constitutionals at the Fatted Calf on Beacon Hill, he returned home with brand-new full-sized bicycles for all the boys stowed in the backseat of his Caddy. While Maureen protested that the bikes were too big, Joe watched shiny-eyed as the boys pedaled up and down the street.

  Maureen had skipped the front entrance of Doherty's to avoid seeing her father-in-law in his present state. He wouldn't really be dead, and their arguments over the kids and the house and local politics would not be at an end (nor would their conciliatory cups of tea, shared in Maureen's second-floor kitchen) if she didn't have to see him there, too big for the largest-sized coffin Doherty had squeezed him into.

  Thirty-six-year-old Maureen McCain had never seen so many grown men crying in all her life; especially given that most of them came from places where men never cried; the O'Donovans of Ball Square and Stew Henry from White Plains and Dennis Febles of the Spanish Harlem Febleses and Mark Lemieux and Mark Donahue and Gene Kee and Biff McLean and Al DiSalvo, weeping openly, like children, like nobody ever wept in Stoneham or Mattapan or up in Haverhill.

  Finally Maureen angled through the shifting mass of people and knelt at Joe's side. In their battles over the years, she'd tried never to lose control of her emotions in front of him; her father-in-law wouldn't have respected that. But now she let it all go; looking at him with his tie knotted up to his neck and brass shining, she let out a long, low wail that cracked over into blubbering, and her knees gave out and she slumped against the bier.

  Helen came straight over and placed a hand on Maureen's shoulder. “Stop crying,” she said, in a quiet voice.

  After forty-two years of marriage, Helen McCain knew that her husband would've been honored but embarrassed by a funeral more suited to a United States president than a tired old cop from Marshall Street. Somebody had told Helen that there were four sitting judges inside Doherty's, and all that kind of fuss was never Joe's style. A few hours before Joe died, when Helen was sitting with him at Mount Auburn, a resident came in and asked how he was feeling.

  Joe McCain sat up in bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared at the young doctor. “How am I feeling? I can't breathe,” he said in a strong voice. “The air in this room is just terrible. I should be out on the sidewalk, walking around.”

  That was the old Joe. And today, just like in 1988 when Joe got shot, Helen had rushed out to get her hair done and her clothes pressed and had spent a full day cleaning her house because that's what the old Joe would've wanted her to do. Then she had come down to Doherty's and thanked all these people for their sympathy, had actually comforted them, and would go over to St. Clement's and up to Holy Cross in possession of herself, in the midst of a deep and secret knowledge of what she and Joe had meant to each other, and keeping all that private, honoring it in that way.

  Shortly before 10:00 A.M. Joe's coffin was rolled out to the hearse and the procession started at the bottom of the Powder House Square rotary, wound its way counterclockwise, and began emptying into Warner Street. St. Clement's Roman Catholic Church is less than half a mile from the funeral home, and even after the hearse arrived in front of the wooden doors, with an army of white-gloved policemen blocking all the side streets and the kilted members of the Boston Police Gaelic Column playing “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes and drums, cars with little magnetic “funeral” markers continued out from Doherty's for the next twenty minutes.

  Onlookers stood on their porches, in driveways, and on street corners, mouths agape, watching in silence as eight rough-looking men accompanied the cherrywood coffin up the stairs and into the church.

  Over a thousand mourners packed the nave of St. Clement's, a massive stone church in the style of the basilicas, with an ornate, hand-carved ceiling and a curved half cylinder of boxed glass forming the backdrop to the apse. Standing in front of the altar was Father John McLaughlin, a former collegiate wrestler and friend of the McCains who had returned to St. Clement's from his new parish in Foxboro to say Joe's funeral Mass.

  Father John said, “Please rise,” and the weight of all those people unburdened the pews in a great harrumph and the sound of their knees clicking was like a myriad of crickets.

  In his adult life Joe McCain was never a churchgoing man, but the nuns of St. Ann's had made a lasting impression on him. After he got shot in '88, the former altar boy developed a habit that intrigued his daughter-in-law. Maureen noticed that every morning when Joe walked the dog, or climbed into his car for the drive to the P.I. office, he would stop at a neighbor's house several doors down and stare up the driveway. One day Maureen just couldn't take it anymore, and when Joe and the dog returned to the house she met them at the bottom of the stairs. “What do you do up there?” she asked.

  A sly Irish grin appeared on Joe's face. “Go look,” he said.

  Maureen left the porch and walked up the street and looked into the neighbor's driveway. At the top of the pitch was a statue of the Virgin Mary encased in an upright bathtub and surrounded by little yellow flowers. Maureen turned and walked back to where her father-in-law had unleashed the dog and shooed him into the house.

  “I sit and pray to Mary and give thanks that I'm still here, and for my grandchildren and Helen and all of you,” Joe said. “I'm not even supposed to be alive. Every day since the shooting has been a ‘gravy day.'”

  Halfway through his father's funeral, Joey got up from the front pew, made the sign of the cross as he passed the tabernacle, and mounted the altar. Dressed in a kilt, high stockings, and his long-sleeved, blue Somerville P.D. uniform shirt, young Joe stood at the lectern and removed a piece of folded paper from his pocket. He read:

  “This is a fitting tribute to my father, a packed church, considering that if today were any of your funerals and it was a beautiful day, he wouldn't have come or he would have been late because he would have been chasing the little white ball around. It's what he loved doing most.

  “When Maureen and I renewed our wedding vows after ten years of marriage in this church with Father John, in front of my family and Maureen's family, there was one person who was not here that day. Can anyone guess who it was? He was playing at Charles River. He had told us a month before that he wouldn't be at the church because it was ‘the most important tournament of the year.' We thought he was kidding; we should have known better.”

  The congregation laughed, their feet stirred, and then they settled down again. At the rostrum, Joey turned the wrinkled piece of paper over.

  “I would like to read a poem by William Canton that I think describes my father best.

  Heroes

  For you who love heroic things

  In summer dream or winter's tale

  I tell of warriors, saints and kings

  In scarlet, sackcloth, glittering mail

  And helmets peaked with iron wings

  They beat down wrong, they strove for right

  In ringing fields, on grappled ships

  Singing, they flung into the fight
<
br />   They fell with triumph on their lips

  And in their eyes a glorious light

  That light still gleams from far away

  Their brave song greets us like a cheer

  We fight the same fight as they

  Right against wrong, we, now and here

  They, in their fashion yesterday.

  Here Joey began to falter, and Brian O'Donovan, sitting right in front of him among the pallbearers, mouthed, “You're doing good. Stay strong.” And Joey continued, his voice breaking over the church.

  “I chose that poem because for many of us in this room, Joe McCain was our hero. I say our hero because although I was his only son, big Joe had many sons.”

  At this, Stew Henry dropped his face into his hands, Mark Lemieux rubbed his eye sockets, and the sound of men weeping came from several places among the congregation.

  “Those men young and old who came to him in time of trouble or confusion or indecision. His door was never closed. The question that was asked most often was ‘Joe, what should I do?' You always left with an answer, whether you liked it or not. In the end, it was usually right.

  “My father was from the greatest generation to ever live. He understood what duty, honor, and courage meant. He was courageous, he had faith, he was, in the words of a close friend, ‘the most honest man I ever met.' He was proud and unbending when he knew he was right. He taught many of us do what was right regardless of the consequences. He taught us to live every day as if it were our last and to be thankful for each day.

  “In closing:

  “When you tee up a ball and hit it straight up the fairway, remember the old man.

  “When you walk down a fairway in the bright sunshine or as he would in the pouring rain, remember Joe McCain.

  “When you scratch your dog's ears while watching television, remember Joe McCain.

  “When you tee up a ball and hit it two fairways over, remember Joe McCain.

  “When you have a one-foot putt and hit it six inches short, remember what the old man would have said: ‘You gotta hit the ball, Mary.'

  “When you sip a cold beer or a good Scotch with a close friend, think of ‘the big guy.'

  “When you are afraid because you have to do something you know in your heart is right, think of Joe McCain, he'll give you the strength.

  “When you think all is lost and there is no answer to your problem, look to the heavens and think of my father, he may give you an answer.

  “Live every day to the fullest, remember the love he had for all his friends, remember his inspiration, remember his integrity, but most of all, remember the love he had for life, the joy he brought to all of us, his infectious laugh and his smile.”

  Joey folded up his paper and left the altar to an encompassing silence. A short while later, Father John dismissed the congregation and then a friend of Joey's named Cheryl Arruda sang “Amazing Grace” from the choir loft and the pallbearers walked abreast of Joe's coffin as it rolled down the aisle. The doors to St. Clement's were thrust open on the first note of the second chorus and Arruda's sweet clear voice was joined by the piping of the Gaelic Column lined up on the sidewalk.

  Content, as he always had been, to loiter on the sidelines, Joe's old partner Jack Crowley was surprised to see Mark Cronin standing in front of him when he and his wife, Ellen, rose from their pew. The taciturn old Met shook Crowley's hand and then struggled to compose himself, looking down at the tessellated floor of the church.

  “The lion is dead,” said Cronin.

  Helen and Maureen and the three grandchildren followed the coffin outside, blinking in the sunlight, and waited in one of Doherty's gleaming black limousines as the congregation poured out of the church; Maureen McCain had never seen so many cops in her life, their grim, honest faces made that much more poignant by a single member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, dressed in his colors, there to pay his respects.

  Maureen watched the Seghezzis go by, then Leo Papile walked past the limo, clutching his brow. On an impulse Maureen got out of the car and embraced him. “How you doing, Leo?” she asked.

  His forearms crossed over Maureen's upper back, the retired Met cop squeezed her tight. “I'm okay, kid,” he said.

  They separated, and Maureen turned to open the limousine door. But Leo had not yet followed Al and Mary Seghezzi back to their car. He stood leaning against the elongated rear quarter of the limo, his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, staring at his shoe tops. While the other mourners streamed past on all sides, Maureen felt like she and Leo were alone in some remote location despite the throng that crowded Harvard Street.

  Leo turned to profile, his face strained but his voice calm and quiet. “My friend is gone,” he said, and he leaned up and walked away.

  With the hearse leading the procession, a line of cars a mile long began rolling toward the cemetery. They crossed beneath Route 93 along the tidal estuary in Medford, passed the Wellington T station and turned onto 16 East, alongside the Everett gasworks and the old Charleston Chew building hard by the railroad tracks.

  When they reached Holy Cross Cemetery, the McCains disembarked from the limousine and watched as car after car drove through the gates. A wind had come up, and by the time the funeral director had arranged Joe's coffin on the canvas straps over the grave, and Father John stood opposite the headstone with his vestments flapping, a large group of mourners encircled the plot. Helen and Joey and Maureen and the children were off to one side, and Brian O'Donovan stood near them as three white-gloved state policemen fired a trio of synchronized volleys into the air.

  Before the sharp, sudden noise had died away, Cheryl Arruda's brother Scott and a former Met cop and trumpeter named Jimmy Cullinane played “Taps” from one end of the cemetery to the other, the notes echoing back and forth in plaintive succession.

  As the reality of Joe's death fixed itself in his heart, Brian O'Donovan felt his jaw convulsing, and then the tears came. It was uncomfortable for him to show such a depth of emotion, in part because his own father was just a few feet away and here he was crying over the death of a man that wasn't even a relation. But Jim O'Donovan walked over and wrapped his arms around his son and held him like he had when Brian was a child.

  “It's all right,” he said.

  Just as Father John reached the lines “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” an armada of clouds passed overhead and the wind increased, stiffening the flags and making them crackle all at once across the cemetery.

  Right at that moment Leo Papile, who had been crying and trembling, yelled out “Joe!” and several good-sized men rushed forward and caught him before he fell. In the midst of his own grief, Brian O'Donovan remembered thinking how sad and beautiful it was that someone could love a man that much, and how Leo wouldn't be around for long now that Joe McCain was dead.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The Punisher

  It was like I was a messenger, and someone was sending me messages and I don't know why. Why was I, I want to say, lucky, in a position to make the arrests that I did? Why me?

  — JOE MCCAIN, SR., SHORTLY BEFORE HE DIED

  MARK DONAHUE IS WEARING HIS FULL DRESS police uniform as we walk along the plush main hallway of the Alexandria Hilton, following Joey and Maureen McCain and their three kids and Helen McCain and one of big Joe's old partners, retired Boston police detective Jack Crowley and his wife, Ellen. Mark and I and one of his friends from the Salem P.D., Officer Jonathan Hoellrich, have flown down to Washington, D.C., to participate in the twenty-second annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service, held on the lawn behind the U.S. Capitol. Thanks to Joe Jr.'s tenacity and the work of their family lawyer, Joe Doyle, fifteen years after he was shot in that crummy Hyde Park tenement, big Joe's name will be inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Judiciary Square, dedicated to peace officers killed in the line of duty.

  In the hotel ballroom two women from the Fraternal Order of Police Auxiliary issue our security badges, and then we all q
ueue up on the walkway for the bus ride to the Capitol. We're surrounded by the survivors of those who were killed or, like Joe McCain, died of their wounds in the past year: a tall, gaunt man from Tennessee wearing a photo badge of a young police officer smiling in his motorcycle jacket; a pretty young Hispanic woman clutching the hands of her five-year-old daughter and two-year-old son; and a whole squad of police officers from Sterling Heights, Michigan, including a guy big enough to play in the NFL wearing pants a couple of shades lighter than the rest— too large to fit. Seeing them all reminds me that there is indeed evil in the world and that the vast majority of cops shoulder a fair amount of risk every time they report to work.

  On the bus I'm sitting next to eleven-year-old Joseph McCain. He and his brothers are attired in colorful Hawaiian shirts and pressed dungarees, each of them wearing a survivor's tag and one of their grandfather's detective badges on a beaded chain around his neck. The boys all love their “Papa,” and eighteen months after his death are still struggling with the fact that the big man with the crinkled blue eyes and white hair is gone for good. But the McCain kids are also voracious pack rats and are hounding every peace officer in sight for a patch or a pin, competing to see who can accumulate the largest and most varied collection. They are far from shy, and not even the hard-eyed state troopers can deter them from asking; Liam's strategy with an Oklahoma highway patrolman who says he has nothing to trade is to ask the tall, well-built fellow if he'll pop one of his buttons off. The husky young Oklahoman smiles and declines and then gazes out the bus window, lost in his own thoughts.